The concept of mental illness.

Psychiatric developments Pub Date : 1989-01-01
H Häfner
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Abstract

In recent years it has often been suggested that there is no such thing as mental illness. In naive Cartesianism this assertion starts out from the assumption that illness may develop solely from physical causes. Before clarifying what mental illness is, we should ask what is understood by the general notion of 'illness'. A constituent of the general disease concept is an unvoluntary and sufficiently serious disturbance of vital functions that needs to be defined in detail-and not just any region of disease causes or symptoms. The general disease concept can be defined in the context of everyday life and in the social and legal context and be filled with detailed normative and threshold values in the medical context. A society with a humanitarian orientation responds to the incapacity of its members owing to illness with attempts at institutionalization, which find their expression in norms, privileges and duties. Special disease concepts were developed for defining specific diseases and distinguishing them from others. Since solely the general disease concept, on which the distinction between illness and deviations from moral or legal norms is founded, is aetiologically neutral, it can be filled with any explanation model at the physical or at the mental level in the frame of specific disease concepts: e.g. with the one cause--one disease model, with multifactorial models or behavioural dysfunction models.

精神疾病的概念。
近年来,经常有人认为没有精神疾病这种东西。在朴素笛卡尔主义中,这一论断是从疾病可能仅由身体原因发展的假设开始的。在澄清什么是精神疾病之前,我们应该问一下“疾病”的一般概念是什么。一般疾病概念的一个组成部分是对生命功能的非自愿和足够严重的干扰,需要详细定义,而不仅仅是疾病原因或症状的任何区域。一般疾病概念可以在日常生活、社会和法律背景下定义,并在医学背景下填充详细的规范和阈值。一个具有人道主义取向的社会对其成员因疾病而丧失能力的反应是试图将其制度化,这种制度化表现为规范、特权和义务。特殊疾病概念的发展是为了定义特定疾病并将其与其他疾病区分开来。由于只有作为区分疾病与偏离道德或法律规范的基础的一般疾病概念在病因学上是中立的,因此可以在具体疾病概念的框架内,在物理或心理层面上用任何解释模型填充它:例如,一因一病模型、多因素模型或行为功能障碍模型。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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